Sindiwe Magona

Half of this book is a fairly traditional collection of short stories, and the other half is a collection of monologues by characters who work as "domestics" in wealthy white households. I love the stylistic experimentation in this latter half; characters appear and reappear across pieces, are presented first one way and then another by different people with different sets of facts. The diverse voices and backgrounds of the women allow a holistic, nuanced view of the profession and its show more attendant hardships—the inequality, despair, and exploitation are just as vivid as the hope and camaraderie.

My favourite story is "Flight," in which a girl watches a new wife or soon-to-be-wife running away from her village and into the early morning mist. We don't know why she's fleeing, or where she's fleeing to, all we see is this beautiful short scene of a woman escaping her pursuers and being engulfed by the glittering fog.

Magona's voice, both tender and biting, is ever-present here. More than anything, so many of these stories are crushingly sad. Women raped, children killed, men toiling away for months in the mines; all of this forms a sort of backdrop of anguish as people go about their daily lives in Cape Town and its satellite districts.

Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night is absolutely worth a read, and I hope to get my hands on more of Magona's work in the future.

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Global Challenge: South Africa show less

At the center of this novel is the straightforward story of one mother reaching out to another, out of grief and poverty, attempting to understand her own son's actions and the world which has proved so unfair to her own family, as well as the family of the woman she writes. Where the actions, and even immediate circumstances, are understood, she struggles with the chain of events that have led to the ruin and heartbreak she sees around her, and Magona's simple and poetic style bring the show more full world of this confusion to life.

Magona is at her best when writing character-driven fiction that explores intersections of socio-political chaos and individual experience--this novel is no exception. Moving quickly, and maneuvering between past and present in the midst of a short and heartbroken letter, the novel is a masterpiece of smart and moving fiction. Magona's work isn't easy to find, but it is worth searching out.

Absolutely recommended. show less

Magona's depictions of poverty and family are striking, each of her stories focusing on the ways in which political and cultural forces tangle individuals in situations they never would have foreseen for themselves. Yet, in each of her stories, there is also humor, and there is also kindness, her characters coming to life on every page so that it truly seems that each story is a world in itself.

What Magona can create and express in 10 or 15 pages is truly remarkable, and her understated show more style is worth reading and sharing.

Absolutely recommended. show less

I wanted to like this anti-HIV polemic but it was too simplistic, the characters too caricatured. I wasn’t sure who the audience really was: some funeral traditions were explained which made me think it wasn’t for an audience local to the author (despite the preface) but there was liberal use of non-English words in the text which made it less accessible to this British White woman.